Zest Fund is a decentralized crowd funding platform that creates a digital syndicate. A syndicate is a collection of people who pool together their resources, with the syndicate acting as a single investment company. This allows individuals to take part in the VC economy. Zest Fund creates a syndicate that allows anyone to become a part of it. There is no restriction on the minimum amount of investment that needs to be done.

With the advent of the internet, a whole new world was opened up. As more and more organizations and individuals began to have an online presence, the world truly became a global village. No longer bound by physical boundaries, firms and companies were interacting with customers that lived on the other side of the world. The dot com era was certainly a boom for companies around the world. This carried a lot of benefit for the companies. With firms that offered services and products in the purely tech and digital form, they were the winners with many even approaching the trillion dollar valuation. These companies, known as Unicorns, are easily identifiable in their early years.

Investment Block

Even with many people around the world recognizing a startup or a company that has the potential to become a unicorn, not all can take part in its funding and profitability. This is due to the fact very strict laws and regulations exist for who qualifies as an investor in a firm. Small investors, such as everyday people are not able to access these companies and invest their money in them.

In many countries, people with low amount of wealth and income are prevented as the companies and firm have a very high risk portfolio. There are chances of a loss and to prevent individuals from losing all their money, laws restrict their ability to invest. Only big venture capital firms and individuals with a large amount of assets can invest. For the ordinary people, they need to wait for an IPO, if any, to get their hands on company shares.

But an IPO, although a lucrative option for many people, is just an exit strategy for the early investors. Buying shares at the cheapest value available, these investors simply sell off their shares that are now valued many times more than they bought for. Twitter, for example, had a value of USD 5 million in its first round of investment options. The last one, the IPO, saw the value increase to 14.2 billion. This roughly translates into a 284,000 percent increase in value in around 6 years.

Bypassing Restrictions with Zest Fund

The Zest Fund works through the release of its Zest Tokens (Z tokens). The platform would allow investors to participate by buying its Z tokens. The more Z tokens a person has, the more profit making chances he or she has. The cryptocurrencies collected through the sale of Z tokens will be converted into fiat. This will allow the Zest Fund platform to invest in several high end startups. The sale of Z tokens will be done through an exchange to ensure that every person has an equal chance of acquiring the Z tokens, rather than have private investors and ironically do the exact same thing the platform intends to avoid.

When an invested startup exceeds its targeted value generation, the parent fund will start yielding profits. These are collected by Zest Fund, proportional to the invested value, and returned to the exchange from where the Z tokens were first available to investors. The profit collected will be in fiat and subsequently will be converted into cryptos on the exchange. The crypto collected will be then used to buy back the Z tokens at market value.

Z token holders would be then able to realize profits on their initial investment that will be far higher than they ever could get. Z tokens will be then burnt to ensure that the high valued tokens do not find their way back into the market and devalue the rest.

As the first round of investment and profitable exit is done, Zest Fund will start another round of seed investment opportunities. This means another syndicate creation. This iteration will be followed by many others, each time the syndicate becoming larger and diversifying into new market territories.

Saad Ullah: An engineer with a passion for innovative technology, blockchain has been a natural attraction. More than a decade of experience in handling HR, HSE and IT management systems for FMCG companies. Currently pursuing Masters in Business Administration.